Standing astride the railroad berm dissecting the Pratt’s Wayne Woods Forest Preserve in the far northwest corner of DuPage County, John Oldenburg peered into the future of the landscape around him.
“Do you see the vision here?” he implored, stretching out his arm to paint a mental picture of a verdant panorama of approximately 250 acres of restored wetlands with biking and hiking trails, equestrian paths, boardwalks and a blind for photographers.
“Imagine ducks, great blue herons, bitterns, moorhens, rails, all sorts of nesting and migrating waterfowl,” he said, his enthusiasm for the visionary plan rising like flood waters in a county where rain-absorbing wetlands once covered 70 percent of the land.
Oldenburg, superintendent of grounds and natural resources for the DuPage County Forest Preserve District, is a man who’s not afraid of big ideas.
The wetlands restoration in DuPage is part of a much bigger idea whose supporters are a virtual who’s who of urban planners, scientists, hydraulic engineers, naturalists and forest preserve ecologists such as Oldenburg.
Indeed, 34 agencies and organizations throughout Chicago’s six-county area–including the forest preserve districts, Morton Arboretum, the Field Museum, John G. Shedd Aquarium, zoos, private conservation groups, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources–have stitched together an unprecedented public-private partnership. They are hoping it will have as far-reaching an impact on the quality of life for Chicago-area residents as Daniel Burnham did when he originally proposed the area’s lakefront and forest preserve systems.
“For too long the forest preserve districts have been concerned with little parcels, mere fragments of the landscape,” said Oldenburg, who anticipates the public-private consortium, called the Chicago Region Biodiversity Council, will result in more people enjoying the DuPage forest preserves.
He hopes it will have broader consequences as well.
The aim is to turn the Chicago Wilderness, the 200,000 acres of preserved lands that lace through the six-county area, into an international showcase for urban natural lands restoration.
“Divided we fall. United we have unlimited potential. That’s the essential vision of the Chicago Wilderness to me,” Oldenburg said. He noted that the restoration at Pratt’s Wayne Woods, one of the largest parcels within the wilderness area, would be among scores of public-private efforts throughout the multicounty area.
Left unchecked, these pockets of preserved nature are becoming choked with imported plants and trees such as the European buckthorn, multiflora rose and Japanese honeysuckle vines, Oldenburg said. Marshes and wetlands are clogging up.
Around the world, three species of plants and animals a day are disappearing in such wilderness areas, said Sandi Stein of The Nature Conservancy of Illinois, the conservation group that conceived the idea for the consortium.
Some predict the consequences could be grave. Among them is Greg Rajsky of Westmont, a member of the DuPage Volunteer Stewardship Group, whose mission is to preserve remnants of the original Illinois landscape in the county, not to turn the clock back to pre-pioneer days but to preserve the natural processes that have sustained humans since the beginning of man.
“There’s got to be a critical threshold,” he said. “At some point, we will have come too far. We don’t know where it is, but if the planet can no longer nurture us, it won’t matter if you’re a Republican or Democrat or Libertarian or whatever,” Rajsky said. He explained that man is one of the species that depend on the ecosystem for survival; therefore, man should be concerned whether the ecosystem itself survives.
He was conducting an early evening tour of the Poverty Savanna in the Waterfall Glen Forest Preserve in Darien, a quiet corner of the preserve where vast seas of native plants, grasses, sedges and oak trees are once again thriving, the result of artful land management and controlled burns designed to replicate conditions that originally kept the competing forces of nature in check.
Primitive man first learned to walk so he could see over such grasses, according to Rajsky. “That’s why this is such a spiritual experience,” he said, as two deer wandered along the edge of the shadowy vista undisturbed by the two-legged visitors to their forest home.
By saving patches of the native prairies, people such as Rajsky perceive they are harboring invaluable treasures that may one day be vital.
Oldenburg agrees, but he recognizes the idea is a tough sell.
What happens, Oldenburg pondered, if scourges such as Dutch elm disease or the chestnut borer attack our primary food crops, our wheat or corn fields? Do preserved seeds from native plants that have survived for centuries hold secrets that could sustain us? Questions such as these are driving the effort to save the tiny segment of native prairies in Illinois, which are less than one-eighth of a percent of the state, amazingly, most of them in the Chicago Wilderness area.
Efforts to save endangered wetlands, forests and their flora and fauna are no longer reserved for the Pacific Northwest and the Florida Everglades. In fact, 193 endangered or threatened plants grow exclusively in DuPage or are of special concern because of their rarity.
Residents in places such as West Chicago and Wayne are once again enjoying the majestic white egrets that travelers sometimes spot from Illinois Highway 53 and the pair of shy sandhill cranes that have taken up summer residence at Pratt’s Wayne Woods, the result of earlier restorations.
Members of the Chicago Region Biodiversity Council want to expand these efforts.
Their aim is ambitious and not without controversy. Pitted against advocates for regionwide, long-term natural lands planning are animal rights advocates who opposed the killing of deer in forest preserve districts, although the unchecked deer population had ballooned to 130 per square mile in some areas within the DuPage preserves before control measures were initiated three years ago.
One of the most vocal critics of the land management vs. land preservation concept is Rob Humpf of Burr Ridge, founder of a grass-roots group called ATLANTIC, the Alliance to Let Nature Take Its Course. “The problem with Chicago Wilderness is it’s not about protection; it’s about prosecution,” Humpf said. “It’s not about saving areas that are in danger of being developed and destroyed; it’s about removing evolution as the primary design force of nature. For 4 billion years, nature has managed to take care of itself pretty darn well. I don’t think nature needs our help to survive. I think it’s the other way around.”
He objects to the $11.6 million allocated by the DuPage County Forest Preserve District from existing funds for its natural areas management program. These funds, to be spent over 10 years, are for 22 programs, including education, wetlands and deer management, controlled burns, reforestation and prairie restoration efforts.
Other critics are more concerned about maintaining a balance within preserved natural areas for multiple uses, although Jack Pomatto, a member of the DuPage Birding Club, believes there’s plenty of room for everyone.
“It’s important to have softball diamonds and picnic areas and golf courses,” Pomatto said, “but you need the natural areas as well. It has almost become an essential part of our society to be able to sit here and release the stress of our world,” he said, taking a break from a hike in the Pratt’s Wayne Woods, where he said he frequently sees mink bounding across the trail in broad daylight. “Too often today our lives are nothing but going from home to work and work to home and home to work.”
“The 200,000 acres of protected public lands in the Chicago region are really a legacy that no other metropolitan area can boast,” said The Nature Conservancy’s Stein. “I think people don’t realize that.”
Others are surprised to learn that the Chicago area’s remnants of native tallgrass prairies and oak savannas are considered by conservationists to be more endangered than the tropical rain forests of South America. A 1995 survey by The Nature Conservancy ranked the Chicago Wilderness along with the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem and the Florida Keys as the best remaining examples of natural heritage in the country.
As a result, “we are considered a hotbed of ecological restoration science by leading experts around the country,” Stein said, citing Oldenburg and the work being done by his colleagues at the DuPage County Forest Preserve District as being among the most progressive.
Residents throughout the county are involved in the effort. Seven hundred DuPage area families, participants in the Forest Preserve District’s Parent a Tree Program, are already nurturing tiny oak trees in their back yards. They’ll be personally invited to plant those saplings at the Pratt’s Wayne Woods wetland restoration site. Oldenburg said he has plenty of other Saturday assignments for willing volunteers.
But his vision stretches farther.
“Imagine sitting down at the table” with landowners, both public and private, along the entire length of the watershed of Brewster Creek, one of two creeks feeding Pratt’s Wayne Woods, all the way into Cook County, he mused. This kind of voluntary cooperation is the core of the Chicago Wilderness concept, as well as educational efforts to encourage homeowners and corporations to plant native species on their grounds and to take care to dispose of hazardous chemicals and household products responsibly. Education is the key, Oldenburg said.
Real estate developers might be encouraged to decrease the density of houses per acre or to build a water detention facility designed to become a marsh, using native plants and prairies as part of the open space that would filter and slow down water flow. Or they might be asked to include a regulation in their landowners’ covenant that would restrict toxic lawn care treatments.
“Do you see the vision here? Maybe the developer never thought of it that way,” Oldenburg said. “DuPage County was 70 percent wetlands 100 years ago, but now it has been ditched and tiled and drained. The hydraulic water levels have been significantly altered. We’ve fragmented the landscape with roads and development corridors and railroads and utility lines.”
He’s not interested in turning back the clock. But he’d like to see people working together to manage the ticking and “to kick start the ecosystem toward recovery.”
HOW TO GET INVOLVED
Educational and volunteer opportunities abound for Chicago Wilderness proponents:
– The Nature Conservancy of Illinois publishes a Prairie University catalog three times a year that lists courses and workshops offered by more than 100 conservation organizations throughout the Chicago region ($2 by mail). Call 312-346-8166, ext. 22.
– For Chicago Wilderness volunteer opportunities throughout the six-county area, call the Chicagoland Environmental Network, 708-485-0263, ext. 396.
– The Morton Arboretum offers classes and volunteer opportunities. Volunteers should call 630-719-2428. For class schedules call the registrar at 630-719-2468.
– For DuPage County Forest Preserve volunteer opportunities, call the volunteer coordinator at 630-942-6088.
